How Does Therapy Work

Therapy offers us a safe and supported space to explore our emotional experiences.

It can be difficult to find words to explain our feelings. Therapy helps by naming feelings. Even if they are hard, painful, conflicted or contradictory; once named they become easier to hold. Words are symbolic. We can find the deeper meanings behind our feelings when we begin talking about them.

A therapist will help you to notice unhelpful patterns that may be guiding your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and relationships.

Humans like patterns. We learn through repetition. Much of our behaviour and relationship interaction is pattern based: “If I do x, then y will follow” . These patterns will (most likely) have been learnt in childhood and may well have been useful then. Therapy can help you to recognise where your unique patterns came from and help you to develop different responses to new situations.

Therapy provides us with new perspectives on the stories we tell ourselves.

Stories help us to understand and make sense our lives. But stories also limit us and keep us stuck in old patterns. Therapy helps us to question the narratives we tell ourselves and helps us to consider other versions. Most importantly, therapy helps us to think more deeply about who we really are and how we want our own unique story to unfold.

Therapy gives us a new relationship with someone who is invested in our wellbeing without any demand on our behaviour.

Your therapist cares deeply about you but does not need you to be or to act any particular way. They want what is best for you but do not need anything from you. This is difficult to replicate in normal life. Most of our suffering comes from the implicit needs loaded into our intimate relationships.

The way the relationship unfolds between you and your therapist offers useful clues about what it is like for you to be in relationship with another. This is useful data in your journey of self discovery.

Therapy is a weekly practice that is in service to you. Only you.

Therapy is an investment in you. It means taking time for yourself in its purest form.

In our busy fragmentary, digital, cosmopolitan life it is hard to think clearly at all.

Therapy allows us to turn up, tune out, and turn inwards.

Sitting with our feelings can be hard. A therapist will hold the reflective space for you and support you to connect with your inner self.